The English Reformation remains deeply controversial. While there is a growing perception that the English experienced a "long Reformation, that it was a protracted process rather than an "event", very significant historiographical differences remain over the pace of change, the means ofimplementation, and the degree of enthusiasm with which the English people experienced the dismantling of their medieval Catholic culture. How widespread was the appeal of early Protestantism in England, and what, if anything, did it owe to native roots? How effectively was religious change enactedin the localities, and how did local communities react to the swings of official policy? In what sense was England a "Protestant nation" by the early seventeenth century? How much continuity remained with the Catholic past?The contributions in this book identify and, in different and sometimes contradictory ways, attempt to resolve these and other questions. It is structured in three sections that combine a themat

This is a collection of the most important and interesting recent articles on the impact of religious change in England in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. An introduction and sectional commentaries help to guide the reader through the maze of current scholarly debates.

First published in 2003. The Debate on the English Reformation combines a discussion of the successive historical approaches to the English Reformation from 1525 to the present with a critical review of recent debates in the area, offering a major contribution to modern political, social and religious historiography as well as to Reformation studies.

Table of contents

These essays examine the long-term impact of the Protestant reformation in England. This text should be of interest to historians of early modern England and reformation studies.

Recasts the Reformation as a battleground over memory, in which new identities were formed through acts of commemoration, invention and repression.

The changes brought about during the English Reformation clearly reflected the desire of the Crown, government and landed classes to reduce the political power and landed wealth of the late medieval Church. This book covers the background to the Reformation, the processes which brought about these major changes and the impact on the clergy and the general population.

This book is a study of popular responses to the English Reformation. It takes as its subject not the conversion of English subjects to a new religion but rather their political responses to a Reformation perceived as an act of state and hence, like all early modern acts of state, negotiated between government and people. These responses included not only resistance but also significant levels of accommodation, co-operation and collaboration as people attempted to co-opt state power for their own purposes. This study argues, then, that the English Reformation was not done to people, it was done with them in a dynamic process of engagement between government and people. As such, it answers the twenty-year-old scholarly dilemma of how the English Reformation could have succeeded despite the inherent conservatism of the English people, and it presents a genuinely post-revisionist account of one of the central events of English history.

This book is a study of the English Reformation as a political and literary event. Focusing on an eclectic group of texts, unified by their explication of the key elements of the cultural history of the period 1510-1580 the book unravels the political, poetic and religious themes of the era. Through readings of work by Edmund Spenser, William Tyndale, Sir Thomas More and John Skelton, as well as less celebrated Tudor writers, Betteridge surveys pre-Henrician literature as well as Henrician Reformation texts, and delineates the literature of the reigns of Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I. Ultimately, the book argues that this literature, and the era, should not be understood simply on the basis of conflicts between Protestantism and Catholicism but rather that Tudor culture must be seen as fractured between emerging confessional identities and marked by a conflict between those who embraced confessionalism and those who rejected it. This important study will be fascinating reading for students and researchers in early modern English literature and history.

Extensively revised and updated, this new edition of The debate on the English Reformation combines a discussion of successive historical approaches to the English Reformation with a critical review of recent debates in the area, offering a major contribution to modern historiography as well as to Reformation studies. It explores the way in which successive generations have found the Reformation relevant to their own times and have in the process rediscovered, redefined and rewritten its story. It shows that not only people who called themselves historians but also politicians, ecclesiastics, journalists and campaigners argued about interpretations of the Reformation and the motivations of its principal agents. The author also shows how, in the twentieth century, the debate was influenced by the development of history as a subject and, in the twenty-first century, by state control of the academy. Undergraduates, researchers and lecturers alike will find this an invaluable and essential companion to their studies.